Many four wheel drive vehicles utilize a threaded bushing to locate and hold the upper ball joint stud in the axle housing. Because of the location of the bushing, it is subject to road contamination (water, salts, dirt and the like) which causes the bushing often to be found "frozen" in place in its threaded bore, and thus quite difficult to rotate, when the need for removal or replacement arises.
Typically such ball joint stud locating bushings are provided with four slots spaced circumferentially around one end of the bushing, the slots being used to install and remove the bushing. Various tools exist which have heads corresponding to the slot configuration of such bushings (i.e., circumferentially spaced projections).
Such heretofore known tools, however, share a common impediment to their effective use: nothing is provided to maintain engagement of the tool head projections and bushing slots, or to in any other way stabilize such tools, during use. Heretofore known tools require the user to maintain contact between projections and slots by manual exertion of downward (i.e., toward the bushing end) force while rotating the tool.
Exertion of such force is quite limited and difficult in practice, since the user is operating such tools from an angle (more or less 90.degree.) relative to the bushing end and the axis of rotation of the bushing. Because such bushings are often frozen and/or otherwise resistant to rotation in the threaded bore, during bushing extraction such heretofore known tools have had the tendency to cam themselves out of the bushing slots, thus preventing effective use of these tools. Improvements in such tools directed toward stabilizing the tool for use at the bushing could thus still be utilized.